Filmmakers Tom O'Mally, Josh Reynolds and Michael Fitzgerald will be joining the fun at the B-Movie Weekend (editor note: Also appearing, filmmaker Ryan Dacko and b-movie head honcho Ron Bonk). We thought we'd find out a little bit about each of these guys.

DG: What should the world know about Tom O'Malley?

Tom: I was born October 18, 1983 in Syracuse, NY and attended both SUNY Fredonia and Syracuse University. My favorite movies inlcude An Everlasting Piece and Magnolia and favorite bands include The Promise, Marathon, AFI, Modest Mouse.

DG: Most of your work has involved the "skate/snow/antics videos."

Tom: I've done graphic design for various companies within the music industry for about 6 years. I was videographer for a skateboard video, "403 VISIONS" in 1999 then moved on to be Director/Editor for skate/snow/antics video "CONVI" 2000, an antics video "CONVICTS" 2000, a snowboard video "CONVI SNOW" in 2001 and the skate/snow/antics video, "CONVI: FOUR" in 2002. "CONVI: FOUR" was my biggest success to date. We wrote, produced, filmed, edited the entire thing by ourselves. We sold over 125 copies throughout the region. We had a promotional table at HellFest 2002 selling videos, shirts, hats, buttons, stickers, and more. Our one-time premier at the Westcott Community Center roped in a full house of 110 people.

DG: What else have you been involved in?

Tom: I was the Director/Cinematographer for a 16mm black and white short "The Ransom" in 2004 and Co-Director/Producer for a 16mm short film "Chloey" in 2005. Right now I'm running a graphic design business specializing in websites, banner ads and flash movies with plans for directing/writing a digital 24p short untitled as of 6/16/05 to be filmed here in Syracuse.

DG: Another guest filmmaker coming to the B-Movie Weekend, Josh Reynolds, graduated from the world-reknowned Tom Savini School and took a few moments to tell us about himself.

Josh: I pretty much live at the tattoo shop were I work as an apprentice at Extreme Graphix in Geneva. I just graduated from school in Pittsburgh doing special FX, I like to draw, paint, look at art, music, all forms of body modifacation, paintball, horror movies, haunted houses.

DG: Central New York filmmaker Michael Fitzgerald will also be coming in for the weekend.

Michael: I'm not really comfortable with the title filmmaker yet. First, I shoot on consumer level digital video, not film, and second I am still in the process of completing my first short, WILL WORK FOR FOOD."

DG: Like a lot of people in the cinema scene today, Michael spent his youth producing backyard videos with his friends.

Michael: We would film everything on my VHS-C camera, which was equipped with a flying erase head. Everything would be shot linerally. We could reshoot a take, but that was the most we could do as far as editing. It was fun, but we never really took it seriously. Eventually, we just found ourselves doing other things and stopped making videos.

DG: As the story goes, that all changed two years ago, when your friend (and star of WILL WORK FOR FOOD) Joe Montreal returned from a horror convention in Ohio with an independently produced horror film, correct?

Michael: It was a shot-on-video action horror movie about a man who hunts werewolves. The werewolves were guys in dollar store quality halloween masks. There was no blood f/x, no gunshoot sound f/x and the main character used toy guns, but the movie was entertaining! It reminded me of how much fun I had making movies with my friends.

(Joe and I) never had a script in our old movies, just a vague direction of what we wanted to do. Whose ever idea it was for the movie would provide the story as we went along and everyone in the cast would improvise their own dialog. We realized that wouldn't work if we were going to make a real movie

DG: So the initial result of six months of work was a feature-length zombie horror script entitled GRAVESIGHT?

Michael: It was one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done. It's been well recieved by everyone who has read it. I'd love to shoot it, but it's a monster. It is way too much, too ambitious for an inexperienced filmmaker.

After the first day of shooting WILL WORK FOR FOOD, I realized how challenging serious moviemaking is. I intend to produce a series of shorts, produced in the Central New York area with many different actors and other filmmakers, before making the leap to features.

DG: Micheal has chosen to focus on horror, which is reflected in his production company's name FIENDISH FILMS.

User Comments

Comment by Ivalene on 2016-04-15 01:06:19I thought I'd have to read a book for a divcsoery like this!